SFM Vol 3 No 2

Sixth Form Mercury Wilson’s School’s newest student-run publication Volume 3, Issue 2, October 2013 Say no to fracking...

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Sixth Form Mercury Wilson’s School’s newest student-run publication

Volume 3, Issue 2, October 2013

Say no to fracking! By Thomas Wadsworth Fracking is a disaster. The Tories tell us it will usher in a new era of cheap gas and bring about a greener environment. Have we not already had enough of their lies?

so far and told the multi-billion pound companies to carry on regardless? Carrying on this topic of protests, the biggest atrocity to date has been the arrest and ignoring of the campaigners.

One of the major claims put forward by the supporters of fracking is that it will reduce the cost of gas for consumers in the UK. One supporter even tried to claim that the people protesting against fracking were not thinking about the consequences this would have on the poor. This is completely false. The UK sells its gas and electricity onto an EU market, meaning that the effects of the drilling will be majorly reduced. Furthermore, these statistics are taken from the results of drilling in the US. The US just happens to be a much larger place, with a much higher potential for shale gas, meaning that the amount being found in the UK is much more limited than the amount in the US. Ultimately, the statistics are nontransferable between the two countries. Another claim is that shale gas will help the UK meet its carbon emission targets in both the long and short term. This is another false claim. While true that shale gas produces much less carbon when burned than coal, this is not the point. When companies have an excess of fuel, the same amount of research and funding will almost definitely not go into green technologies. What the UK needs is an increased solar, wind and tidal intake. We have a huge quantity of these renewable, natural and green resources at our fingertips, and we are only now starting to see the benefits from them. Fracking will reverse the policies coming into place over these resources and will leave us with a short-

term solution to the problem, lengthening the amount of time we have to solve the problem of global warming, but not solving it altogether (and you really can't be a sceptic about global warming and climate change without having completely misunderstood their meanings and the research that has gone into proving them). Moreover, it has been shown that fracking causes severe issues in terms of the geology of the surrounding landscape. When earthquakes were felt in Blackpool, major stakeholders in the fracking industry set out immediately to disprove any claims that it was as a result of the fracking process. Since then it has been found that the process has lead to 109 earthquakes in Ohio alone. Of course in the US they have much more free space, meaning the tremors are left unnoticed. However when plans for drilling include places such as Blackpool and the Lake District, these tremors cannot be left unnoticed.

The Department for Communities and Local Governments has told planners to ignore the protesters. But this belief that you can just ignore the public and that their views are worth less than those of billion-pound companies with their millionaire heads shows just how poor the current state of British politics is. People have a say in what goes on in their local area, and the country as a whole, too. These people are not doing anything wrong, just campaigning for what they believe, correctly, to be the problem with fracking. To show how bad the reaction from governments has been, I will end on an example from the US where two children have had a gagging order taken out against them, to restrict them from speaking about fracking. These two children, aged 10 and seven, will never be allowed to speak of fracking again. This example is just one of many which show that current governments care more about pleasing their multimillion pound funders than the people they are meant to be protecting. Something needs to happen, and soon.

The government has said that the local community will have a say in the fracking process and that their concerns will be addressed. If this is the case, then why have they ignored the protests and complaints that have arisen

Want to write for Sixth Form Mercury? It is open to all sixth formers with an interest in writing! Contact either Nick Page or Jack Taperell for more information: Email: [email protected] [email protected]

Sixth Form Mercury, October 2013

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Hi all,

Contents

This month, we have something for everyone: politics, science, literature and, of course, sport . The Sixth Form Mercury is the perfect opportunity to take your mind off the stress of university applications, those ever-present EPQ deadlines and the inevitable bombardment of homework over half term. Sit back, get comfortable and enjoy!

Article

Page

Say no to fracking

1

Editors’ note

2

Talking to primates

2

Reading for pleasure

3

Getting the percentages right

4

Nick and Jack

Talking to primates By Hayden Jones A paper that discusses the possibility of a primitive form of syntax in the calls of wet nosed primates has recently been published by a team of scientists in Biology Letters.

was placed on the ground, the monkeys “started with at least four A calls before adding B calls into the mix”. If the Oncilla was placed in a tree, they made “a single introductory A call before switching to B calls”.

The black fronted titi monkeys, a type of small, long tailed primate, belong to the new world monkeys, and were therefore not before thought to be able to refer to such a high level of detail in their calls; only simple events.

to be no clear synaptic rule for both call sequences found - for example, perhaps ‘animal location’, which can be likened to a rule such as ‘subject object verb’ that we find in English. The fact that only apes and New World Monkeys have been seen to combine different calls in different orders for increased meaning suggests that the split that occurred roughly 40 million years ago between catarrhines (comprising Old World Monkeys and Apes) and the platyrrhine (New World monkeys), may have been preceded - or at least accompanied - by these differences in synaptic calls.

Working on a private nature reserve in south eastern Brazil, the team elicited calls from five groups of monkeys by placing two different types of stuffed animals in different locations in their territory.

It also shows an example of convergent evolution: the independent evolution of similar features in species that are of different lineages.

When they placed a Caracara - a Brazilian bird of prey that normally dwells in the trees, in its natural place - the monkeys always gave a rising pitch “A” call. When they did the opposite, with a type of small spotted ground cat - the Oncilla - the monkeys produced falling pitch “B” calls, as they were on the ground.

According to co-author Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, “The five different groups were almost unanimous in their response. There was no deviation”.

Astonishingly, however, the researchers found differences in calls when the normal positions for the animals to be found in were changed: if the Caracara

This is the first time that New World Monkeys have been observed to encode both the type and location of animal in their calls, though there seems

The team plans to play recordings of different call sequences back to the titis to see how they react. More research on syntax in different lineages of the order primate, such as apes (which include humans), will perhaps be able to lessen the burden on archaeologists for fossil and genetic evidence, and shed light on the everillusive problem in linguistics of how humans developed their very first language.

Sixth Form Mercury, October 2013

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Is reading for pleasure a forgotten endeavour? With an ever increasing emphasis on university preparation, countless co-curricular activities available and endless internetbased entertainment possibilities, it has recently become a concern of mine that fewer and fewer sixth form students are actually reading for pleasure.

And I am not alone in this view either, as recent findings from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) startlingly show: “On average, students who read daily for enjoyment score the equivalent of one-and-a-half years of schooling better than those who don’t”.

With a not unnoticeable advancement in the level of work expected of sixth formers, demands on students’ time are escalating.

So, in fact, making decisions on your reading not based exclusively on what will educate you, but what you will enjoy, could help you to become a more desirable candidate.

Indeed, to achieve one’s best, one must push oneself in terms of independent study time - and this takes away some of the opportunity to read for pleasure that we may have had in Year 11 or below. Furthermore, the intensified workload may push students away from any desire they may have had previously, to read for pleasure. For instance, English and History students will find they have dramatically more reading to do for their course, which only serves to take away the dimension of pleasure from reading. Reading has become something you do to help you pass a test, rather than be edifying or enjoyable. Students have less free time, despite studying fewer subjects, and do not wish to spend that time doing something they normally associate with progressing in their academic studies.

By Aaron Abrams

PISA’s statistics also show that more girls read for enjoyment than boys, and this could be because of the perception of reading people have. Reading for pleasure is not something boys should be ashamed of; it is associated with better academic performance and should be more fervently encouraged.

Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses.

Reading has become something you do to help you pass a test, rather than being edifying or enjoyable

After all, as Oscar Wilde said, “It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it”.

Secondly, the ‘Do it for Uni’ mentality has crept into a lot of the decisions people make when deciding what to read. People only want to read things that will aid their university application. It is no secret that it is helpful to a successful university application to have a good grasp of the subject you wish to study, and to be well read around the subject. I completely agree and encourage anyone to try and tailor some of their reading around what will further their learning in the area they wish to study at higher level, if that is something they wish to pursue. However, I think that choosing what you read with an eye to finding something that will genuinely interest you is paramount. If you enjoy what you read, you will naturally be explorative in your learning, seek to voice your opinions and read even more; all qualities that universities are looking for in students.

It’s not all bad news, however. In developed countries, two thirds of students said that they read for enjoyment on a daily basis though this figure is declining. I don’t feel that we as a body of people have completely stopped reading for pleasure, but much evidence points to the fact that that is where we are headed. If this decline in reading for pleasure continues, we are looking at a generation of people who are entirely work-oriented and have no depth of character whatsoever.

The playwright Oscar Wilde - one of whose characters says: “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

Sixth Form Mercury, October 2013

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Sideline Scoop By Harry Curtis

Getting the percentages right

As I watched an NFL game a fortnight ago, the camera suddenly focused on the Indianapolis quarterback, and a host of unintelligible abbreviations and numbers was heralded into picture accompanied by a Star Warssound-effect-aboard-a-space-age graphics package.

Monday Night Football, Sky’s blue-chip football programme, stands as testament to this. Gary Neville’s sensible analysis, supported with sparing use of the facts, has really struck a chord.

Leaving the realm of broadcasting to look towards the boardrooms, in an age where Having frantically worked out that “ATT” sport is increasingly seen as a business, invesprobably intimated the player’s number of tors may see less risk in writing a cheque to pass attempts, I was questioning whether the sign players whose stats ‘speak for themadjunctive number constituted an impressive selves’. Arsenal’s long-defamed transfer recperformance or a poor-show when the graph- ord was smashed on deadline day with the ic was snatched away with another whoosh. signing of £42.5 million man, Mesut Özil – a price-tag that seems warranted when you I’m exaggerating. But as sports broadcasting consider (as fans the length and breadth of becomes slicker and punditry finds itself sub- Britain did) the fact that no other player had ject to the creeping influence of statistics, you amassed more assists over the last few seaget the feeling that the passing and rushing sons (72 since 2008). yard figures that present themselves to American football viewers at every opporFor sportsmen and women, too, stats must tunity can’t be far from crossing the Atlantic - be an invaluable resource. Fred Perry surely the latter perhaps in the guise of ‘dribbling would have relished the chance to walk off yards’. the tennis court and pore over the number of unforced errors he’d committed or his first So, with such a development – in my opinion serve percentage, as Andy Murray is able to – on the horizon, what are the pros and cons do. And, applied properly, stats can not only of sports stats? inform analysis but streamline training regimens. An obvious plus point is that pundits can no longer go unchallenged in voicing obviously However, there are also drawbacks. With a misinformed opinions. While the likes of world of numbers and percentages – beyond Graeme Souness and Jamie Redknapp from the customary possession, shots to shots-ontime to time still sit in their swivel chairs and target and corner stats – available online, it’s exchange flimsy vagaries, their word is no not unheard of for ordinary fans to transform longer taken as gospel. themselves into self-appointed sporting actuaries.

It’s a trap I’ve fallen into before and there’s a real danger of people falling prey to a sort of statistical lycanthropy whereby pie charts concerning pass accuracy have an effect comparable to that of the full moon on a werewolf. In essence, the downside is that a sport loses its objectivity. After all, can you really put a number on a player’s “passion” and “fight”? Although the stats division of the NBA have painstakingly tried to formulise a similarly abstract idea, namely how “clutch” a player is (which is to say how well a player performs in do-or-die situations), trying to make sense of the result is about as futile as figuring out the flow of traffic around a cloverleaf junction in a road atlas, though – admittedly – not quite as dull. Depending on whose hands they’re in, statistics can be the a complimentary condiment to good sporting analysis or a faucet of contextless numbers that inevitably turns a broadcast into a cesspool of pass completion percentages and shots to shots-on-target ratios. Ultimately, whether or not we view statistics as a curse or a blessing relies on our realising that they’re only appropriate for a certain percentage of the time and on our getting this percentage right.